Social Psychology Investigate People 's Behaviors Within Group Interaction

Furthermore, stereotypes are used to increase an individual’s self-esteem and strengthen their social identity. Social identity theory contributes largely to the formation of stereotypes, as it states that a person’s social identity is formed from being part of a group. To justify one’s own group, they often pick out real or imaginary differences and flaws in other groups and compare those to their own group (Ford & Tonander, 1998). This led Ford

I survey the body language, facial expressions and the possible words or phrases that can be interpreted more than one way. Because of this course I am more tolerant to people who are prejudiced. The most personally influential chapter to me was chapter two in the assigned textbook. The chapter introduced me to how stereotypes are formed and the consequences of categorizing people. Studies show that in order to simplify the workload of the brain, we place people into social categories based on previous experience and peer learning. “Social categorization involves thinking about people primarily as members of social groups rather than as individuals” (Blaine, 22).I found that I engage in this practice, but the automatic groups do not usually have negative stereotypes attached; When I meet a negative exception, they are then sorted into a subgroup.The second most influential chapter …..Chapter four of the textbook details the components of prejudices. the stereotypes and instances of prejudice enabled me

Stereotyping characteristics are associated with our past experiences of the particular group’s characterization and thus, in essence, we would have to have a certain picture of that group’s social behaviors on our minds. Eventually, such characterization leads to the generalization of the entire group’s social and cognitive behaviors that we believe are inbound or depict the true

Negative stereotypes could lead to many negative consequences. Fiske (2014), a professor of University of Massachuse refer that stereotypes are automatic responses, which have an impact on individuals’ decision

Researcher Joseph Kenneth wrote a book arguing that stereotypes are a key factor in the theory of “Constructualism” (296). The theory of Constructualism is “the process by which people interact, exchange information, and consequently learn” (295). Constructualism argues that individual learning takes place on two levels. First, social interaction brings forth new knowledge that represents cultural customs over time. Second, as people share and receive knowledge with others, a perception of what is expected for them to know becomes apparent. “Paired with the assumption of homophily (Lazarsfeld & Merton, 1954; McPherson, Lovin, & Cook, 2001), that people tend to interact with others similar to them, constructuralism explains how social relationships evolve via interaction”(296). Joseph Kenneth wrote that while people may hold perceptions of other smaller groups, cognitive limitations prevent them from understanding people’s specific qualities. Rather, they use their perceptions by incorporating what they learn about others into generalized beliefs of what people are likely to know. Perceptions are based on past experiences and similarities, such as race or gender. These perceptions are the basis for stereotypes. Stereotypes can be useful because they help people navigate through the world to find others with common interests, but they are not necessarily true

Within our groups, we want to make ourselves look good and others look bad. This kind of behavior is natural, but the problem occurs when one group has an inordinate amount of power over other groups and uses this power to keep them subjugated. This causes us to judge not the individual, but the individual as we view him through the lens of society. “We conceive of each man … as being the human type which is suggested by his individuality” (p. 3). This type of judgement based on outward appearance is due to generalization in our heads. We have these generalized views of others because society has engrained them in our heads since the time we were born. These types of generalizations are what leads to us describing situations differently depending on what types of people are in the situation. We think of people as stuck in these categories and also believe that categories are firm and cannot be changed. This is simply not the case because “we are easily misled into thinking that categories which directly or indirectly are sociological ones are the only, and universally

Research in psychology has revealed that stereotypes, when factual, are an aid to information processing and facilitate accurate judgment and smooth social interaction (1). However, such research has also revealed that, unbeknownst to the perceiver, when the stereotype is invoked it also typically triggers inaccurate beliefs about the social group that ascribes predominantly negative qualities to the group and its members (2).

Former research is an explicit indicator of how one's behavior can be a product of the situation that person is present in. Experiment one of "Automaticity of Social Behaviour: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action that trait concepts and stereotypes" by John A. Bargh, Mark Chen, and Lara Burrows of New York University provides an experiment analyzing that behaviour through an experiment which will form the basis of critique in this paper.

In everyday life, people are members of a group. These groups are made up of two or more people who interact with each other, possess similar characteristics, and have a sense of collective unity and can manifest themselves in a workplace, online, and sometimes within our own homes, (Kendall, 2015). As an individual interacts with group members, the behavior, or range of overt physical and emotional responses toward a stimulus or situation, of the individual is subject to be altered, (Bergner, 2011). Within a group, group members desire for any individual that is also a member of the group to behave as other group members do. When individuals’ behavior is incongruent with other members of a group they belong to,

The Problem with society is that we cannot accept that we are all different. Many people have seen others as different from themselves but feel that they are in the majority of people that are alike. This can be called social discrimination. Stereotypes are prevalent in society. Stereotypes are inevitable and unpreventable. As we accept that we are always under scrutiny in others eyes we begin to examine ourselves. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of stereotyping and discover how they lead to greater social identity. Once they learn their identity they find themselves stereotyping themselves and others.

Stereotypes and prejudice are comprehended as related but different concepts in social psychology. A stereotype is a cognitive representation of a social group that humans construct by associating specific attributes and emotions with the group, whereas, prejudice is the pure positive or negative evaluation of this social group. In more recent literature, much attention has been given to the dependency of implicit stereotyping and implicit prejudice and their different implications in human behaviour.

Negative behavior is something we all have experienced and we often question how a person could behave the ways that they do. Naturally, we tend to put the blame on people for making bad decisions- for blatantly ignoring the social signals that are presented right in front of ones face. However, we typically dismiss or fail to think about what may be the primary cause for the negative behavior. Throughout this essay I will explore social psychology and elaborate on negative behaviors observed. There are certain social psychology theories and phenomena explained throughout the psychology textbook “Psychological Science”, which can help explain these questionable decisions many of us make.

Social categorization produces prototype-based depersonalization. the social attraction hypothesis approaches group solidarity and cohesion as a reflection of depersonalized, prototype-based inter-individual attitudes (Hogg, 1987, 1992, 1993). A distinction is drawn between inter-individual evaluations, attitudes, and feelings that are based on and generated by being members of the same group or members of different groups (depersonalized social attraction) and those that are based on and generated by the idiosyncrasies and complementarities of close and endur- ing interpersonal relationships (personal attrac- tion).

According to Cartwright & Zander (1968), a group may be defined as a “collection of individuals who have relations to one another that make them interdependent to some significant degree”. Other definitions state that a group is “two or more persons who are interacting with one another in such a manner that each person influences and is influenced by each other person (Shaw, 1981). Turner (1987) goes further to say that “a psychological group is one that is psychologically significant for the members, to which they relate themselves subjectively for social comparison and the acquisitions of norms and values…that they privately accept membership in and which influence their attitudes and behaviour”. Clark & Pataki reserve the term “group”

Stereotyping is acquired throughout an individual’s life by learning from society. This concept is shown by the experiment of Bargh et al. (1996). Bargh created three groups, and had each of them individually complete word puzzles. The first groups work puzzles had words that evoked rude feelings, such as “bother” and “disturb.” The second group had a word puzzle with politeness such as “courtesy” and “behaved.” The third group had neutral words in their puzzle. When they were finished the puzzle, they were instructed to find the researcher. However, the researcher was intentionally in a conversation, which he stayed in for ten minutes. The